Four years on and the words remain clear as ever.
Tyrone had just defeated Monaghan in a nerve-jangling All-Ireland quarter final but they had been forced to dig their defensive heels extra deep. Frontline talisman Sean Cavanagh had even pitched in with a tackle on Conor McManus that prevented a clear goalscoring chance and only earned him a yellow.
At full-time, up in The Sunday Game studio, Joe Brolly was fit to be tied. Tyrone got a verbal blast but Cavanagh copped a barrage.
“He’s a brilliant footballer,” Brolly declared, “but you can forget about Sean Cavanagh as a man.”
It was an astounding moment. A highly personal moment.
We never knew just how personal it was until Colm Parkinson asked the RTE pundit and former Derry footballer about it on SportsJOE Live. Brolly explained there was more to it that mere frustration.
“What was the hatchet job on Sean Cavanagh?! For three matches in a row that year, he and his Tyrone colleagues were systematically pulling guys down. And everybody was sitting there in the stands going, ‘Jesus Christ… ‘
“After that third time, when he pulled down Conor McManus at Croke Park… and it really, particularly annoyed me.
“Because whenever I did a fundraiser for Clontibret one night, they put up this big photo on the wall of Conor McManus sitting on my knee, beside the Sam Maguire, whenever we won the All-Ireland [1993]. And this kid, who had dreamed of that his whole life, he was going through and he was going to stick the ball in the net, Cavanagh jumps on him and he pulls him down.
“And Cavanagh is all with the poor mouth stuff. ‘Oh I’m just doing what anybody that was on my team would. I don’t like the rules as much as the next man. I think the black card couldn’t come in quick enough’. All that aul’ stuff. All that pious stuff.”
Everything is personal, Brolly insisted. He continued:
“[Sean] knew what he did and he did what he did himself. He did what he did and he knew what he did.
“My point about that was, urgently, we need to stamp it [deliberate, tactical fouling] out of the game because it was destroying the game. It was systematically ruining the game and they were just using it as any other tactic.
“And Mickey Harte would be defending it and saying, ‘Well that’s it and he’s just taken one for the team’. All of that stuff.”
Brolly feels the “uselessness” of the black card means a real chance to eradicate the game of such negative tactics was missed. The idea of taking a black card for the team has ‘become the norm’.
The full discussion on Cavanagh – the full episode, in fact – is definitely worth the watch:
